Without our assistance, this scared, weird little guy will certainly perish. But the good news is, eating chocolate in his image this Easter could help save our unassuming friend.

The bilby is a dinky-di Aussie threatened with extinction.

Not too long ago, bilbies could be found in arid and semiarid areas, spread across three-quarters of Australia.

Today, the greater bilby is only found in pockets of mulga and spinifex scrubland in far south-west Queensland, as well as northern Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

They are listed as “vulnerable” nationally and “endangered” in Queensland, where only an estimated 1000 remain in the wild.

But a group of dedicated scientists, wildlife conservationists and volunteers are working tirelessly to bring the greater bilby (also known as the rabbit-eared bandicoot) back from the brink.

They are aided in their race against time by funding from the Save The Bilby Fund, Federal Government grants and major donations from community groups such as the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland.

Darrell Lea Chocolates is the only major company selling chocolate bilbies that contributes to the fund – $42,000 last year alone and more than $225,000 in total.

On a recent Traveltrain Holidays visit to Charleville in southwest Queensland, I was introduced to these amazing creatures at the Environmental Protection Agency/Queensland National Parks and Wildlife centre, which operates a captive breeding program for bilbies.

With a long-pointed nose, silky pale blue-grey fur with patches of tan, big ears and a black and white tail fanned like a tiny Mohawk, the bilby is certainly a unique Australian marsupial.

The males grow to about 45cm in length, and weigh up to 2.2kg; the females, are smaller, growing to about 30cm and a weight up to 1.2kg.

Females have a backwards-opening pouch for their young, similar to that of koalas and wombats.

Coordinator of the Save The Bilby Fund in Charleville, Emily Chandler, says breeding occurs throughout the year and the Charleville EPA centre females have produced 15 young during the last six months.

Female bilbies can breed from six months old and have only a 12- to 14-day pregnancy, often producing twins. Young stay in the pouch for 80 days.

Bilbies then put their young in burrows, returning for about two weeks regularly to feed them, before the young become self-sufficient.

The very controlled breeding program also has adults in captivity at Dreamworld and David Fleays Wildlife Park on the Gold Coast.

A total of 30 adult bilbies are involved. EPA zoologist Peter McRae is in charge of the breeding program at Charleville, and has been studying bilbies since 1988.

He was working as a National Parks and Wildlife ranger in Charleville when he and fellow ranger Frank Manthey devised a plan to try to reverse the decline of bilby populations, which had been decimated by predators such as feral cats and foxes, competition for food by rabbits and livestock, and changing habitats as a result of agriculture and different fire patterns.

They wanted to erect a predator-proof enclosure for bilbies at Currawinya National Park, about 1000km west of Brisbane, near Hungerford on the Queensland-New South Wales border.

On March 28, 1999, they launched the Save The Bilby Fund to raise $300,000 in an Australia-wide appeal.

After hours and in school holidays, they worked tirelessly for the appeal, hosting bilby information nights, designing and selling a line of bilby merchandise, visiting schools and increasing public awareness of the creature’s plight.

They became known as “the Bilby Brothers”, with Australian Story screening a documentary on the pair and humorously labelling them “the men who killed the Easter Bunny”.

The response to their appeal was overwhelming, with more than $800,000 raised – nearly three times the target.

A 29sq km enclosure was officially opened at Currawinya at Easter 2001 and completed in 2002, when a program began to remove all bilby predators from the area. Due to drought conditions, the first bilbies weren’t released there until 2005.

Peter McRae, who monitors the animals inside the enclosure, was delighted to find the first-known pouch young to be born inside the fence in 2006. More bilbies will be released at Currawinya this year.

“The aim is to increase numbers to about 400 inside the fence at Currawinya, and then open part of it (to release them) to the rest of the national park,” Emily says. Eventually, the Currawinya Project will protect Queensland’s second wild population of bilbies.

The other is at Astrebla Downs National Park in the Channel Country near Birdsville, with a population of about 300. With demand increasing to see bilbies in captivity, the fund has supplied Currumbin Sanctuary, David Fleay’s Wildlife Park, Australia Zoo, Dreamworld and Scotia Sanctuary in South Australia with bilbies for display and, in some cases, breeding.

Frank Manthey is now the promotional officer for the Save The Bilby Fund and, along with volunteers, makes the annual trips to the Royal Easter Show in Sydney and the Brisbane Ekka to take this cute little marsupial to the city folk.

In a major boost for conservation and tourism in Charleville, a Federal Government grant of $5.1 million, plus $600,000 from other sources, will see an underground bilby educational complex built as part of the present Cosmos and Observatory Centre, on Qantas Drive near the airport.

The development is expected to be completed early next year.

Until then, visitors can take part in a 75-minute presentation called The Bilby Experience from April 2 to October 8 at the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service centre in Park Street.

Bookings are essential (p 4654 3057). All donations to the Save The Bilby Fund can be sent to PO Box 155, Charleville Qld 4470 p (07) 4654 1255. www.savethebilby.com